Apelon has a long and unique history assisting organizations model information, especially structured terminologies. Structured terminologies are essential to meet a crucial challenge facing medical information systems: the need for comparable data, both within an individual organization and across multiple enterprises. Having data expressed in comparable terms is necessary to integrate disparate software systems, to drive decision support, and to facilitate outcomes analysis, among other strategic objectives. Use of structured terminologies allows new systems to embody standardized, hence comparable, data from the outset; structured terminologies also provide the interlingua for mapping, translating and correlating data from diverse legacy systems. When terminologies are standardized at national and international levels, these benefits become magnified and shared.
Structured terminologies are also a powerful approach for enhancing a computer’s ability to deal with data. Simply speaking, a structured terminology is a scientifically valid, reusable model consisting of concepts, terms that name those concepts, and relationships between the concepts. A concept’s terms and relationships provide the basis for distinguishing the similarities and differences inherent in the elements of the model. And it is through the traversal of these relationships that a computer can come to “understand” the domain for which the model has been developed, and be called upon to use this model for analyses, inferences, and answers.
For maximum utility, structured medical terminologies must be accurately and completely modeled, i.e., they must exhibit and expose a number of key features. They must be both comprehensive (“can I describe everything I do”), and detailed (“can I describe exactly what I do”). And in spite of extensive size and complexity, they must eliminate redundancy (“can I say the same thing in two different ways”) and ensure consistency (“have I avoided contradicting myself”). In particular, the control of redundancy and consistency are not factors for which humans are inherently well-suited. Thus it is logical to look to a computer program, or authoring tool, to assist in the development of such a structured terminology.
Apelon’s Terminology Development Environment (TDE) is the premier solution for the creation, maintenance and evolution of structured terminologies and ontologies. TDE, along with associated Apelon modeling services, has helped to improve the quality and efficiency of the complex, people-intensive and time-consuming task of developing formal, structured terminologies for customers like the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control, College of American Pathologists (for SNOMED CT), Kaiser Permanente, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
TDE combines a powerful, customizable, GUI-based authoring/editing application with a terminology engine based on Description Logic. Advanced features of TDE include version management and control, workflow and conflict resolution for distributed authoring, and flexible methods for exporting and exchanging terminology data.
For organizations needing to create and evolve critical terminology assets, TDE provides a comprehensive structured terminology solution that reduces maintenance costs, increases terminology quality, and improves results. For the TDE Data Sheet, click here.
For more information about terminology modeling in general, or the TDE modeling solution, please complete the information request form.
